On that Saturday they were a wretched little party down at the docks, waiting about four hours with Sholto already on the deck of the liner which seemed rooted to the wharf. It appeared fantastic to believe that Sholto was really going to that place called Australia. Who had been the first to suggest such a preposterous thing? But he was on board. It was done. Lots of other people went, and their friends and mothers were seeing them off calmly enough. They must just pretend to be like the others. It was an alleviation that Georgie was not there. (After all she had returned to London four days earlier.)

They all longed for the liner to move, but nothing happened, and nobody could give them any definite information, except that passengers must remain on the ship and friends on the wharf.

Presently Linnet remembered quite suddenly that though it was Saturday he had to call for something at the office, and with a foolish wave of his hat towards the liner he went away. But Juley and Joanna stayed on and on, hanging about. Sometimes they walked up and down, sometimes they rested on barrels or on coils of rope till they were chilled again by the March evening. It was horribly sad, and quite useless to wait. But to have left now would have been like shirking one’s watch beside a dead body It began to grow dark. Lights were hoisted on the masts of the ships, and here and there on the wharf.

At last a man carrying a lantern came up to them and told that the start had been postponed till next morning early. But all passengers, he said, must stay on the ship. He promised to deliver the farewell notes they now wrote to Sholto. When that was done they left the wharf. They were dropping with fatigue.